Theoretical calculation of electronic circular dichroism: A promising tool for the determination of absolute configuration of natural products / 国际药学研究杂志

ABSTRACT

Determination of the absolute configuration is one of the most important and long-standing issues in the structure elucidation of natural products. Some natural products have difficulty forming crystal structures or yield few crystal structures, making it impossible to determine their absolute configuration by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and chemical derivatization such as Mosher reaction. Circular dichroism (CD) can be measured in solution, needs only small amount of sample, requires no standards and can be recycled after measurement, so the absolute configurations of chiral natural products can be determined reliabley by comparison of electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra with experimental CD spectra. In this paper, we attempt to use the bioactive natural product found by our group, (-)-alternarlactam, together with its synthetic by-product (+)-alternarlactam, to help us understand the applicability of this approach in determining the absolute configurations of complex chiral natural molecules.